Background: No study has been undertaken to understand how spirituality and spiritual care is perceived and implemented by Saudi nursing students undergoing training for their future professional roles as nurses.
Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the perception of Baccalaureate nursing students toward spirituality and spiritual care.
Design: A descriptive, cross-sectional design was employed.
Settings and participants: A convenience sample of 338 baccalaureate nursing students in two government-run universities in Saudi Arabia was included in this study.
Methods: A self-administered questionnaire, consisting of a demographic and spiritual care background information sheet and the Spiritual Care-Giving Scale Arabic version (SCGS-A), was used for data collection. A multivariate multiple regression analysis and multiple linear regression analyses were performed accordingly.
Results: The mean value on the SCGS-A was 3.84±1.26. Spiritual perspective received the highest mean (4.14±1.45), followed by attribute for spiritual care (3.96±1.48), spiritual care attitude (3.81±1.47), defining spiritual care (3.71±1.51) and spiritual care values (3.57±1.47). Gender, academic level and learning spiritual care from classroom or clinical discussions showed a statistically significant multivariate effect on the five factors of SCGS-A.
Conclusions: Efforts should be done to formally integrate holistic concept including all the facets of spirituality and spiritual care in the nursing curriculum. The current findings can be used to inform the development and testing of holistic nursing conceptual framework in nursing education in Saudi Arabia and other Arab Muslim countries.
Keywords: Holistic nursing; Nursing education; Nursing students; Saudi Arabia; Spirituality.
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